the water in your body to unblock your system naturally. and it doesn't cause bloating, cramping, gas, or sudden urgency. miralax. look for the pink cap. tonight on "the axe files," former attorney general eric holder talks potential impeachment proceedings and the current a.g. >> barr seems to think that's his role to represent the president as opposed to representing the people of the united states. >> president trump's deep state conspiracy theories. >> that really, really pisses me off because i know these people. i was one of those people. >> his advice for the 2020 democrats. 2008 is about a hundred years ago. we have to be prepared to fight for our democracy. >> and the highs and lows of his historic career. >> i made a mistake. that's one that i blew. ♪ ♪ welcome to "the axe files."

>> general holder, it's great to be with you again here in washington where congress is back in session. impeachment in the air, impeachment talk. i want to draw on your expertise. you came to this town 43 years ago and you worked in the public integrity unit of the justice department. do you believe there are grounds for impeachment for congress to proceed with impeachment? >> i don't think there's any doubt about that. if you look at just the mueller report there are grounds there for impeachment. there were ten specifications of possible obstruction of justice. i think that at least four of those are pretty solid. the attempt to get mcgahn to do certain things and get sessions to take over the investigation, i think there is clearly a basis for impeachment on the basis of mueller and the emoluments clause. i don't think there is a basis for an impeachment inquiry and

an impeachment investigation. >> let me ask you about mueller and his decision not to draw any conclusion as to whether the president committed obstruction of justice. he cited justice department rules. those were in place when you were attorney general. did you agree with his approach to this? >> it was interesting. i actually thought that what bob mueller said was fair. he thought that because he could not indict the president, the president would not have an ability then to respond to a charge he might make. i was perplexed to see the attorney general say no, in fact, if mueller wanted to say that the president could have been indicted he should have said so. so i think bob conducted himself in an appropriate way. barr -- >> and what about that? what about -- now you've read the report. >> yeah. >> going back to his distillation of the report he summarized it for the country many weeks before, and he got to see the report.

>> evidence developed by this special council is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense. >> was that a fair summary? >> no. i mean, what barr did in the two public interactions he had with regard to the mueller report was totally untruthful. he said things about the report that were totally inconsistent with the things that were contained in the report, and it was really kind of puzzling to me. it was as if we'll get the report and we'll get this and compare to what you've said to what's in the report. >> was he trying to buy time or -- what do you think was his motive? >> i'm not sure what his motive was, but i think the impact of having the attorney general of the united states disemble and say something that was inconsistent did a great deal to harm him and to harm the justice department. >> do you think congress should proceed. >> that's a different matter

than whether they could, whether they have an inquiry is impeachment a wise thing to do at this point and would they be shirking their responsibilities if they didn't proceed? >> yeah. i think that they should proceed with an impeachment inquiry and an impeachment investigation and that does not commit you to impeaching the president and i think that's what people have to understand. i think you have to go through a whole proceeding and make a determination that you're not going to impeach him and you'll sensor him and there will be a house of representatives and as the house of raptivepresentativd lay out all of the things and not send it to the senate where the republicans are likely to acquit him, deny him that, but actually lay out for the american people. put witnesses in front of the american people. i want to see don mcgahn testify. >> do you think he will, by the way? look, every administration has

issues with congress over executive privilege and your administration, the one i served in, did as well. they're taken a tough line on this issue of executive privilege. do you think that ultimately the courts will compel these people to testify? >> yes. i don't think that the executive privilege that might have existed still is in existence. the fact that mcgahn actually spoke to bob mueller waives the privilege that might have existed and he and others will have to testify. >> if there is no impeachment, do you believe that he is subject to prosecution after he leaves office? >> i don't think there's any question about that and we have an indictment. >> relative to the payoffs. michael cohen is already in jail with regard to his role and individual one is the president and it would seem to me that the next attorney general, the next

president is going to have to make a determination. >> that's an interesting question. you came here in the post-watergate period. president ford made a decision to pardon president nixon because he thought it would be bad for the country to go through a trial of a former president. would there be a cost to that? >> i think there would be a potential cost to the nation by putting on trial a former president and that would be part of the calculous that goes into the determination that has to be made by the next attorney general. i think we all should understand what a trial of a former president would do to the nation. i think that shaped the determination that general ford made with -- >> it may have cost him his election in 1976. >> yeah. it might have, but i think looking back -- i tend to think that that was probably the right thing to do. >> barr was cited for contempt of congress.

you were the first attorney general to be cited for contempt of congress in the fast and furious investigation. what's different about the scale and scope of what this administration is doing and how it is relating to the congress? >> i was found in contempt with regard to fast and furious and we made witnesses available. we had 8,000 pages of documents. >> there wasn't a lot of back and forth in the courts about additional material and it took years to sort that out. >> right. what we did and what i did was as a matter of principle say you're not going to get access to deliberative materials within the justice department. all of these documents have now been given to congress. sessions decided that when he became attorney general he'd turn this stuff over and you'll only find that i did what i said and i held back things that were deliberative in nature and this administration has taken a fundamentally different view to say that we're not going to respond at all to what congress

asks us about and the contempt to me, it seems that they held barr in is far more justified than what happened to me in the fast and furious. >> the issue of the justice department itself, i know that you spent most of your life there. i remember, you and i having a bit of a scrap in the white house because i wanted to -- >> a small scrap. >> i wanted to recommend a communications person and you felt it was an affront to your independence as attorney general. what do you see with the relationship between the white house and the justice department now? >> it's too close. there has to be a wall between the justice department and the white house. the question is how, you know, how tall that wall needs to be, but there are certain things that an attorney general has to have the independence to do free from white house interaction. i remember when i was being considered and i was up for confirmation and senator pat leahy said something that i always kept in my mind that i

had to be the attorney general of the united states and i was not the secretary of justice and the attorney general is different from all other cabinet members and the justice department gets into trouble when it allies itself too closely and history shows us that. >> the president has made it clear that he thought the attorney general should be his lawyer and do you think barr is playing that role? >> yeah. the president's statements were very troubling and it's troubling that barr seems to think that in fact that is his role as attorney general to represent the president as opposed to representing the people of the united states. >> you work with mueller. i mentioned that. you also work with jim comey as fbi director. they're very different. >> yeah. >> -- personalities, mueller is a straight by the book guy. comey is a bit more of a maverick and we just saw a report from the ig, the inspector general at the justice department that was a pretty strong rebuke of comey for

leaking materials, sensitive materials and not classified materials to try and nudge the appointment of a special prosecutor. what was your reaction to that and his overall role over the last few years in the 2016 campaign? >> yeah. first off, the baseline for me is that jim comey is a man of integrity. i disagreed with him with what he did during the course of the election, and the press conference that he had saying that he was not going to recommend indicting hillary clinton. i think that was something an fbi director doesn't do. it was something that the justice department and the attorney general should have held that press conference and i understand with regard to the material that he got out there. i think his concern was that unless he did that, the information would not be treated in an appropriate way and in fact, we saw that the reloose of that material did result in the

appointment of an independent counsel. the ig made an appropriate determination, but i understand why jim did what he did. >> my impression is that he is someone that at times arogates to himself what he doesn't have and the hillary clinton press conference and the second wave in 2016 when he revealed that he had found some e-mails and then at the very end said that they didn't amount to anything. a lot of people think that that had a materiel impact on the election. that seems completely contrary to not just the role of the fbi director, but the role of the justice department which generally stays out of campaigns. >> yeah. i mean, i grew up in the public integrity section as you mentioned and the justice department was only supposed to speak when it indicts and you don't talk about somebody that you could have indicted and what you might have done if you're not going to give a charge and you just aren't quiet about it and that was the biggest concern and that was the biggest problem

with how jim conducted himself in 2016 and i wrote an article about that and it was hard for me to write because i've known jim for 20 years. i like him. i respect him, but i thought as i said in that article and good men make mistakes and i thought he made a mistake in 2016. >> the president has waged a full-scale assault on the integrity on the fbi and the justice department suggesting deep state political and so on. what is the impact on that institution of all of his rhetorical thrusts? >> first, we have to be real clear here. there's no basis for the things that donald trump has said about the justice department and the fbi. those are career folks who dedicate themselves to finding the truth, bringing charges when it's appropriate and they do it at great risk to themselves. and the impact of that is certainly on the morale of the justice department, but there's a long-term impact as well, where the justice department and the fiber seen as potentially

politicized. there are going to be credibility determinations that the jury will have to make between what an fbi agent says and what a defendant says and having this president saying that that fbi agent is a political person in nature could have an impact at the trial level and it's totally unjustified and long term, i think, is very harmful and it's something that really, really, if i can say it pisses me off. that really pisses me off. i worked with these people. i know these people and i was one of those people and to see the president go after the justice department in the way he has is totally inconsistent with what a president ought to do. >> coming up on "the axe files," how much of the opposition to president obama do you think was rooted in race? ♪ ♪ fact is, every insurance company hopes you drive safely. but allstate actually helps you drive safely... with drivewise. it lets you know when you go too fast... ...and brake too hard.

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general. you hung a portrait in your private office there of one of your frepredecessors, nicholas katzenbomb. >> he was the person who escorted a young african-american woman past george wallace in 1963 so that she could integrate the university of alabama. that young african-american woman was vivian malone who was the sister of my wife sharon malone. that notion of having a deputy attorney general integrate the university of alabama with my now deceased sister-in-law, was something that i thought was special and it was the reason why i wanted to have nick's portrait in my office. >> do you remember that scene? >> i do. >> i remember that quite well. >> the governor standing in the door. >> i remember that quite well. 1963. i was 12 years old and black and white tv in the basement of my small house in queen, new york. >> did that influence your career choices when you chose to go into the law?

>> it did. >> because i was struck by the kennedy administration and by the way, robert kennedy conducted himself as attorney general. i remember thinking to myself things that bobby kennedy did with regard to organized crime and standing up for civil rights as attorney general. i thought to myself, this is kind of what i'd like to be -- this notion of government service is something that i think i'd like to do. >> you made a speech a few weeks into the administration in 20 -- >> i'm sure you love that one. >> it gave me a little bit of dyspepsia in which you called america a nation of cowards when it came to talking about race, but in fairness despite my dyspepsia because it did create some political problems and i went back and read the speech and it was a very thoughtful speech. >> in things racial we have always been and we, i believe, continue to be in too many way essentially a nation of cowards. >> what are the conversations

that we're want havinot having country that we should be having? >> with the anniversary, we're beginning to have the deep conversation about race that i think that we, for too long, have avoided. what i said in that speech is we've become expert at avoiding these difficult, painful questions around race and i understand how difficult it is and how painful it is, but if we ever want to get to the place where we need to be around things racial, we will have to have these conversations and on the basis of those conversations take concrete actions. >> so the conversation about that whole legacy of bringing 4.5 million people here and enslaving them. >> 250 years of slavery. 100 years of, you know, legal segregation in essence and american apartheid system. we still are feeling the impacts of that in 2019. i think people need to acknowledge that. i see mitch mcconnell saying i wasn't alive when the slavery

was going on and what is this talk of reparations all about? guess what, mitch? you are alive during the era of legal segregation when people got advantages and people who look like me were held back simply because of the color of their skin. so there's a reckoning that this nation has to make about racial matters. >> you know, you mentioned what mcconnell said. there is this tension because you've got a bunch of people in this country on the wrong side of the changing economy. particularly in rural areas and white towns and communities. they don't feel privileged and they resent this discussion. it's something that donald trump has mind that sense of resentment. >> that's something they hope the next democratic president will talk about to make people understand that the white

workers have more in common with their black and brown counterparts than they do with the fat cat, you know? the special interests who this administration represents. there's, you know, i understand how this president has been successful in dividing us. i think the next president will have to hopefully be equally successful in making people understand that there are things that unite us regardless of race and on the basis of economic condition and economic deprivation that should bring people of all races together. >> you were a prosecutor here in d.c. you were a judge for five years and then as attorney general, you were the chief law enforcement officer, but you also were -- when trayvon martin got shot i know you went to ferguson after the police shooting there and you talked about your own experience. it seemed like a hard line to walk as the chief law enforcement officer and as a black man in america who has

experienced some of the very things that those protest eros t on the streets were talking about. >> it was one of the reasons i left the bench as a judge. i was a judge for four or five years. i was in d.c. during the crack wars when it was the murder capital on a per capita basis and i would have these waves and waves of young black guys who i had to send to jail. many of whom when i read their backgrounds were similar to me and that's why i decided to become u.s. attorney to be on the side of making determinations about who i was going to prosecute and prosecute them and ask for what kinds of sentences. we need to hold people individually accountable for the things that they do, but we also have to take into account as we use the power of the justice department and the justice system the systemic feactors tht breed crime and push them into choices that were they given a fair shot they would not

otherwise make. >> how much of the opposition to president obama do you think was rooted in race? >> it's an interesting question and i've wrestled with that. >> there was certainly a political dimension on that, but i wonder if it comes off as political in the minds of people who are not overtly racist. how much of that was racially motivated? they looked at this guy and said he's different. >> he also was a symbol of change, and you know, that is a major tension in our politics. we're becoming a much more diverse country. it's hard to conclude that that wasn't at least part of what riled up the opposition. >> yeah. we are familiar with this notion of implicit bias, and i think there could be implicit political operation and these are not things that are front of mind when people think they're acting in a political way, but

the veemence with which he was opposed and the things that were said about him. >> did you experience that yourself? >> yeah. all of the things that you can say about barack obama you can say about eric holder, and's loy of it it was a change that was presented and for me, i was ooh on and there was this implicit things in the minds of some will people. >> you and i met whenup heading the vetting in 2008 and joe biden has emerged as that choice. he's been under attack from senator booker, senator harris for some of his past positions against school bussing for his sponsorship of the crime bill in 1994 that they associate with mass incarceration, and some of

the things he said about segregationists in the senate. >> when you did the vetting do you recall these being issues? were they discussed? was there any concern about his commitment on civil righters on his approach to these issues? >> no, not really, if they'd had come up they would have registered with you. >> yeah. i think that's right. i think people evolve and we are talking about some of the things that he said or did 30, 40 years ago, and i don't think there's any basis for people to believe that a president biden would be you know, less committed in civil rights than president obama. >> were those attacks unfair, do you think? >> no. i think those things can be raised and it's then up to him to explain and as i've just said to say i might have been wrong then, but this is where i am now and judge me on the entirety of

my career and that's true of everybody. i think kamala harris as being inclined to be a prosecutor. >> if she were the nominee that might be some strength. >> if i was giving her advice, don't try to quickel about it. i was there for the protection of the people and california and i did that in a way that was consistent with fairness. >> up next on the axe files. >> he balled up his fist and put it in my face and said what dunk? powerful 5g experience for america. that's why the nfl chose verizon. because they need the massive capacity of 5g with ultra wideband, so more screaming, streaming, posting fans... can experience 5g all at once. this is happening in 13 stadiums all across the country. now if verizon 5g can do this for the nfl...

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your dad was an immigrant from barbados. you grew up in queens in's

really interesting neighborhood that was changing from jewish and italian to much more diverse and a lot of very prominent african-americans lived in that community, rate? louis armstrong and sydney pointier. >> and malcolm x. >> you had a brush with greatness outside of malcolm x's house when you were a kid. >> great story. malcolm x lived on 97th street and i lived on 101st street and zip code 13669 and i was at the candy store when my brother said hey, cassius clay is at malcolm x's house. >> he had just won the title against sonny liston and that changed his name of muhammad ali and he was signing autographs and just interacting with us and i was a bit of a smart-ass kid

and if people remember the weigh-in with sonny liston and i said, so were you scared of sonny liston and he towered over me and balled his fist and put it in my face and said what do you think? and i said, no, no. and he signed an autograph for me which i kept for years and then my mother in one of her periodic cleanings. >> this is my story, man. of all of my -- i had jackie robinson's autograph. >> mine said to ricky from cassius clay and it was on a piece of paper torn off a bag from the candy store and my mom disposed of it. >> i grew upon in new york at the same time you did. malcolm x was killed in 1965. it was very ominous event, and it was part of a very turbulent time. what are your recollections of that era and how that era shaped

you growing up in new york? >> it was an interesting time. i grew up -- and i was born in 1951 and i grew up in the placid '50s and then boy, the '60s just take off with the assassination of president kennedy in november 1963, malcolm, '65 and obviously what happened in '68 and i go to college in 1969 and it was a turbulent time. >> in many ways you're a straight-laced guy and then the part of you that took over the rotc building and renamed it briefly for malcolm x. >> it still exists in columbia and still called the malcolm x lounge. >> still there? >> my mother was shocked, mad, upset that i was part of that takeover. i didn't send you to school for that, but i saw, you know, i was part of a generation that was against what i thought was an unfair, unjust war. i wanted to be an activist. i wanted to be a part of the

change. >> so you went to law school. you went to washington, and you joined the public integrity unit at the justice department where you stayed for 12 years prosecuting corrupt politicians. why was that something that appealed to you? >> i wanted to go to the justice department because i thought that being on the inside you could have an influence on the way in which justice policy was shaped and i didn't want to be a prosecutor who tried street crime cases because it seemed to me that the system was unfair in a whole bunch of ways there, but going after politicians who gave me the benefits that a society can give and i thought those were the kinds of cases that i can give and i expected to have two or three years in washington and i expected to get back to new york and i just never made it back. >> years later as the u.s. attorney, you prosecuted maybe the most prominent corruption case that has been seen in this

town and that was dan rosstankowski, a guy i knew from chicago, probably one of the two or three most powerful people in washington. at the end of this discussion you became deputy attorney general, and there was an episode at the very end of that administration, you were in charge of signing off on pardons from the justice department, and there was a fellow named mark rich, a very wealthy guy who had flouted the embargo of iran and he fled and left the country and then waged a very long and expensive campaign including political donations and hiring president clinton's former white house counsel to get a pardon, and in the final hours of the administration he got that pardon, and you signed off on that pardon and that became a real big story, a scandal of sorts after the administration. what happened at that moment? >> yeah.

you know, i'd like to think that if people that looked at the entirety of my career would think he did a good job and that doesn't mean i was perfect and that's one that i blew. >> were you under pressure? did you feel pressure to do that? >> it was interesting. it happened on the last night of the administration. i was going to be the acting attorney general, the next day we were dealing with the inauguration of friday and we were concerned about his safety along the route. the call came in and i didn't do what i should have done which was to interact with the woman on my staff who handled all pardon matters and said deborah, what do you think about this? i just made a decision where i said, you know, i'm not sure. i'm kind of for it. i didn't really kind of weigh in in the way that i should have. it's something where, as i said, i made a mistake. i blew it and i learned from that mistake and i was certainly questioned about it during my confirmation hearings and

although it's not something i'm proud of i think it made me a better attorney general than i otherwise might have been. >> ahead on "the axe files". >> i'm not particularly a brag does bragadocious person, but this is one where i was 1,000% right and my opponents were 1,000% wrong. giving back. subaru and our retailers have given over one hundred and sixty-five million dollars to charity. we call it our love promise. and it's why you don't even have to own a subaru to love a subaru retailer. love. it's what makes subaru, subaru get unlimited talk, text and data with our most powerful signal ever- all for just $30 bucks a line for 4 lines. and for a limited time, get free smartphones too! get 4 new lines of unlimited and 4 free phones for just 30 bucks a line!

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>> you served as attorney general for six years and were involved in land mark reform, criminal justice reforms and you took a lead role in the debate over same-sex marriage, and then there were some controversies as well. a few weeks ago you said immigration was a place where you thought some mistakes had been made. what were the mistakes that you thought were made on the issue of immigration during the obama year? >> well, i think the way in

which we were dealing with, you know, families that were coming across and trying to keep families together in these, i guess, we called them family detention centers. those were not working out quite well, but i think the thing that people have to remember is that we changed and we didn't keep those things in place and we moved people on. >> president trump says the obama administration was -- were the ones who startedwe kept fam realized even keeping families together in a detained basis was not something that was good for especially for the kids in those families and we moved to a different policy. mistakes were made and corrections were put in place. >> there's ang of the among the left about the fact that there were hundreds of thousands of deportations a year. the administration was pretty robust in that area. >> yeah, but the emphasis there was on people who had criminal

records, people who posed a danger, a public safety risk. those were the people who we emphasized as, you know, deporting. democrats have to understand that we do have to have borders do mean something. >> what do you think of the proposal that many of the candidates want to decriminalize border crossing and turn it into a civil offense. >> i don't think that's right. the law has been there for a hundred years or so. >> would it send the wrong signal to decriminalize? >> it would certainly take a tool away from the justice department that they might want to use in an individual case and for some reason or another, trafficking, a human trafficking component and it is up to the justice department to use its discretion in an appropriate way and i don't think this administration's justice department is doing that. >> are you worried that issues like this will blow up for the democratic nominee?

>> yeah. i mean, i think we need to look for solutions to the problems that we confront that are consist went who we are as a party. consistent with the democratic tradition, but also the kinds of things that we're going to be able to deliver to people. people who believe in government because they're promised so much and we frequently don't deliver for them and i hope that we'll be realistic and progressive with our principles. >> one another critique that you hear now and i hear it all the time, why not prosecute the people who were responsible for the financial crisis and the financiers who packaged up fraudulent mortgages and made off like bandits. >> first of all, let's level set here. first off, we have record amounts of money from the banks who engage in these inappropria inappropriate settlements and ship them for the people that

were harmed. if we could have brought these cases we would have brought them. these are career-making cases to the extent that we could have brought those cases we would have, but it was so diffused with the financial institutions and the best u.s. attorneys would have thought that we would charge individuals and hold individuals liable and we being aren't make the case. >> in this past week we marked the anniversary of 9/11, and it made me think about your own battle to prosecute terrorists and particularly khalid shaikh muhammad, the architect of the 9/11 attack in civilian courts rather than in military tribunals. you didn't win on that point. he's still sitting in guantanamo and won't be tried until 2021. >> there's another one that i'm saying i'm really pissed off.

i'm not particularly a brag braggadocious person and this is one where i was 1,000% right and they were 1,000% wrong. civilian prosecutors said this is why we have to try the case in the southern district of new york and all of the problems that we've seen in the military side were predicted in the memos that i received and it was on that basis that i decided the case ought to be tried in the civilian courts in the place where that incident had occurred, where americans died in the southern part of manhattan. if that had occurred khalid shaikh muhammad and his confederates would be just a memory now. they would have been convicted and i suspect given the death penalty as opposed to talking about a trial that would be over 20 years after that bad day in

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supreme court decisions that came down on your watch was the shelby county versus holder decision which invalidated a significant portion of the voting rights act. what has been the impact of that decision? >> as was predicted and certainly if you look at justice

ginsburg really prescient dissent states have gone to town and put in a whole range of voter suppression measures that would have been objected to and stopped by a justice department that had a fully formed voting rights act. these unnecessary voter i.d. laws. the way in which you move polling places around or close polling places in certain areas. that is going to be seen as one of the worst decisions by a supreme court. and it's coupled with citizens united that lets untold amounts of money into the system. we have the shelby county case which guts the voting rights act and then the other case that says partisan gerrymandering is okay. >> just recently. >> that suite of cases unfortunately i think is going to define the roberts court and the roberts court will be seen as not standing up for our democracy on the basis of those three decisions. >> you and president obama have formed a couple organizations, one is to fight in the courts on

gerrymandering on voter suppression and so on. and another is a more overtly political organization. that is aimed at electing democratic legislators across the country and will have a lot to say about redistricting. you are in a much more political role. does it give you any pause to be the former attorney general who is now out there trying to elect democratic candidates around the country? >> no. i actually see a continuity here, a continuation of the work that i did as deputy attorney general, u.s. attorney, and attorney general of the united states. i am supporting candidates who will stand up for our democracy, who will stand up and protect our democracy. and i think that right now that is again another defining issue between the republican party and the democratic party. republicans are content with being a minority party that has majority power. it's the democratic party that is saying, here's the deal.

all we want is a fair shake. let's make this a fair fight. if it's a fair fight democrats and progressives will do just fine. i'm not fighting for partisan advantage. i'm fighting for fairness. >> you're not going to support republican candidates. >> i would support a republican candidate who was for, you know, a fair process against a democratic candidate who was for an unfair one. i'm not here to gerrymander for democrats. when the new jersey democrats tried to use the power that they had to in essence gerrymander the state i stood up very publicly and said that was something i was opposed to. i've done things with arnold schwarzenegger the former republican governor of california. >> if i could find republican partners to join in this fight with me i'd put my arms around them and, you know, be more than glad to make this a bipartisan effort but that is not where the republican party is. >> so there was this period of time when you were actually openly pondering running for president yourself.

what caused you to sober up on that point? did president obama give you some advice about what it all entails? >> sure. i talked to him about it. i spoke also to my family about it. let's just say i was out voted in my family as to whether or not we should proceed along these lines. you know, my kids saw what malia and sasha had to deal with and what they continue to have to deal with. i had to take into consideration, you know, their thoughts, my wife's concerns. and also balance that with the involvement that i had with the national democratic redistricting committee. i was really concerned i'd leave this in kind of mid stream so it was a combination of my obligations, to things i am really committed to, the gerrymandering, the pro democracy effort. plus the family concerns that made me decide to kind of pull back. doesn't mean i'm comfortable even to this day with with that decision but it is the decision i made.

>> you say you aren't entirely comfortable with the decision. why? >> because i thought i could do the job. i thought i had a world view that would be good for this nation at this time. i thought i had the necessary experience. i thought i would make a good candidate and be a good president. and it was hard for me to pull back from those conclusions. >> do you think there is something missing in the field? there are quite a few candidates out there. are there things that you wish they had, qualities, arguments that are not being made? >> no. i think, you know, viewed in its entirety i think our candidate pool is expressing i think all the right ideas. i think that we will end up with a good candidate. i just thought as i looked at the field and i looked at what i thought i could bring to the field that i had some unique things that would have made me attractive as a candidate and i think good as a president.

>> so you had a moment of over exuberance i would say out on the campaign trail. you kind of amended michelle obama's signature statement. she said, when they go low, we go high. you had a different interpretation. >> when they go low we kick them. >> right wing media had a field day with that. >> the snowflakes on the right were all concerned. you know? give me a break. give me a break. >> what did you mean by it? >> it meant, simply this. democrats need to be tough. you know? 2008 is about a hundred years ago. you're not going to be running against john mccain who is going to stop that woman who said all kinds of negative things about president then candidate senator obama. democrats have to be tough. we have to be prepared to fight for our democracy. it doesn't mean we got to get into the dirt with donald trump on a daily basis. we got to be strategic in how we

use that. but we have got to be prepared to fight, to be tough. and that's what i was trying to say in using that phrase. >> so, knowing mrs. obama as i do, i was curious if you had any conversation with her about it. >> no, i've not talked to her about it. i don't know. my guess would be she probably would say, you know, do your own thing. don't necessarily involve me. that part i might have changed. but the sentiment of being tough, being prepared for a fight, you know, that's what democrats do. we fight for our principles. we fight for what's right. we fight for the people. we fight for our democracy. this is not a time to compromise. not with the republican party as it is presently constituted. >> you sound like a guy who has a little bit of that candidate sensibility in you yet. but i won't get you in trouble at home. eric holder, always good to be with you. >> all right.

thank you. >> see you again. >> to hear more of my conversation with eric holder go to luminarypodcast.com. you're live in the cnn newsroom. i'm ana cabrera in new york. breaking news tonight. a stunning attack on the world's energy supply. secretary of state mike pompeo is pointing the finger squarely at iran. the attack happened in saudi arabia where huge flames lit up the night sky. rebels claiming they launched armed drones hitting crucial oil facilities setting them on fire. "the wall street journal" reports tonight that saudi and u.s. officials are looking into the possibility it could have actually been cruise missiles launched from southern iraq. but if so, that would contradict this tweet sent out by